Gottfried Feder

Gottfried Feder (27 January 1883-24 September 1941) was a German economist and one of the founders of the Nazi Party, with one of his lectures leading to Adolf Hitler joining the party.

Biography
Gottfried Feder was born on 27 January 1883 in Wuerzberg, Bavaria, German Empire, and he attended humanistic schools in Ansbach and Munich before studying engineering in Berlin and in Switzerland. In 1908, Feder founded a construction company, and he began to study economics in 1917. Feder hated the big banks, seeking to nationalize the banks and abolish interest. In 1919, he co-founded the Nazi Party with Dietrich Eckart, Karl Harrer, and Anton Drexler, and he became Adolf Hitler's mentor after meeting him at an anti-Bolshevik demonstration; he indoctrinated Hitler with a hatred of "Jewish finance capitalism". In November 1923, he was one of the leaders of the failed Beer Hall Putsch in Munich, but he became a Reichstag member, demanding the freezing of interest rates and dispossession of Jewish citizens. When Adolf Hitler took power in 1933, he disappointed Feder by appointing him Under-Secretary at the Ministry of Economics, a lower post than Feder had expected. After the 1934 Night of the Long Knives, he withdrew from public life, and he died in Munich in September 1941.